Day: October 3, 2017

There’s not a day that goes by where I’m not putting on my clothes, shoes, or brushing my teeth, where I just think about the ordinary lives of, people who just went to have fun at a concert, or the ordinariness of the day from people on 9/11, who were just doing an ordinary thing, and then you never get home.

These days of tragedy and crisis are to remind us all to be present in the ordinariness of our lives, that actually turns out to be extraordinary, when the person you love doesn’t come home at night.

I pay attention to things, when I need to and this is to make us all more enlightened and awaken about our own life, and the fact that it shows up this way is a nightmare. But, as I overheard someone say, seeing people coming together, helping each other — whether it’s this crisis we’re in or what we saw weeks ago in, in Houston, in Florida, and now in Puerto Rico — it shows the human collective of us all. It’s an opportunity to show the best of ourselves, when the worst shows up.
At Mandalay Bay casino the gunman had a device to turn a rifle into a rapid-fire weapon and at least one of the rifles the gunman had in his hotel suite was outfitted with a bump stock, a device that would enable it to fire hundreds of rounds per minute. Bump stocks are legal and inexpensive, with some versions advertised for $99. A standard stock is firmly fixed to the rifle. But a bump stock allows the body of the rifle to slide a short distance back and forth, harnessing the recoil energy of each shot. The shooter does not move the trigger finger; instead, the weapon bounces, or bumps, rapidly between shoulder and finger.
In 2013, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California proposed outlawing bump stocks, but Congress has not acted on her proposal. She proposed a ban again today on Tuesday.
Survivors had described the scene on Sunday in vivid detail: Thousands of people screaming and running for cover at an outdoor music festival as victims fell around them. Mr. Paddock stationed himself in a 32nd-floor luxury suite of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino and fired into a crowd of thousands of people. Law enforcement found Mr. Paddock dead in his room at the hotel.
Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said that Mr. Paddock placed cameras inside and outside of his hotel suite. The federal authorities said there were no indications that Mr. Paddock had ties to any international terrorist organization, despite a claim of responsibility by the Islamic State.
Mr. Paddock worked for the federal government for roughly 10 years, from 1975 to 1985, a spokeswoman for the federal Office of Personnel Management confirmed.

Investigators unearthed multiple job applications, with Mr. Paddock’s fingerprints on file, as part of records reflecting his employment as a letter carrier for the Postal Service; as an I.R.S. agent; and as an auditor of defense contracts.
Mr. Paddock and his three brothers were raised by their mother, who told the children their father had died when in fact he was in prison, Eric Paddock said. Mr. Paddock’s father was convicted in 1961 of committing a series of bank robberies and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He escaped from La Tuna federal prison in Texas in 1968 and became a used-car dealer and bingo parlor operator in Oregon.
The police estimated that when the shooting began, there were 22,000 people at the Harvest Festival, listening to Jason Aldean, the final act of the three-day event.
Video of the shooting captured nine seconds of continuous, rapid fire, followed by 37 seconds of silence from the weapon and panicked screaming from the crowd. Gunfire then erupted again and again in extended bursts. Some concertgoers thought the noise was fireworks, but as it became clear what was happening, people fled, many of them unsure where the shots were coming from, or where they should go.
Our hearts goes out to everyone involved and our condolences to the 59 families who lost loved ones and over 500 victims who were wounded in Sunday’s (Oct. 1) massacre at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas. Continue to keep the faith.

A memorial to the victims in Las Vegas, Nevada on the corner of Sahara Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard.